A Token of Frank's Extreme

And why I started all this:



In about 2 minutes in, Ruth says Zappa meant the two chord (D2, G2, etc) as dropping the third and replacing it with the 2nd. In the case of D, you have D E A, as opposed to the standard D F# A. (And you may want to pause soon after, because they switch from music theory and "Rollo" nearly directly to "Dinah Moe Hum".)

When I see a D2, I instead think of a Steely Dan mu chord, and I think about putting the on a higher note. That is, when I don't think "Hey, I'll just play the D. Nobody will notice." But that's the lazy in me.

Come to think of it, the Zappa form is what I would normally see as a Dsus2, which I discussed earlier, especially how in most cases, the suspended chords are more quick ornamentation on what's fundamentally a major or minor triad. Here, we're talking about something else. You suspend the second and you're totally dropping the third, which means that the chord won't tell you major or minor. (Which is one of the reasons you'd want to do such a thing.)

Ultimately, The question is how to play the thing. Since it's a D, you'd still want to keep a D in the root — we've talking the Zappa one, but if we were talking the mu chord, we'd maybe want the (dropped) major third in the root — so x57755, but I keep wanting to put the fifth on bottom and play it like an Asus4, 577755, which it kinda is.